Following
the 1986 World Cup, Franz Beckenbauer had two years to prepare for the 1988
Euros that West Germany would be hosting.

As
a result he had the time to prepare and experiment without any qualification
worries.

Following
the retirements of some of the ageing players following the Mexico World Cup
(Rummenigge, Magath, Briegel, etc), he called up many younger players in line
for the Euros.

The
first order of business was to rebuild the defense.

Goalkeeper
and Captain Harald Schumacher and Thomas Berthold were still on board, as well
as Stuttgart’s Guido Buchwald, one of the unlucky casualties of the World Cup
Finals cut.

However,
Klaus Aughentaler was discarded, along with club mate Norbert Eder, who was not
selected again.

Experienced
Stopper Karlheinz Försterhad
joined France’s Olympique Marseille and requested a leave of absence from
national team duty to adjust to his new club.

For
this first Post-Mexico season (1986/87), Beckenbauer tried to impose Thomas Hörster
of Bayer Leverkusen as his new Libero.

In
addition Jürgen Kohler of Waldhof Mannheim was installed in the stopper position.

Photo
from: Fussball Magazin, May 1987

(Guido Buchwald, Jurgen Kohler and Franz
Beckenbauer)

More
importantly Beckenbauer wanted to build the team around the creative talents of
Schalke’s young midfielder Olaf Thon, who was seen as the future of West
Germany.

Lothar
Matthäus was also taking on a more of a leading role at Bayern Munich, now that
Danish Soren Lerby had been transferred to AS Monaco.

For
West Germany’s first match of the new season, The Germans played an away Friendly
vs. Denmark on September 24th for Allan Simonsen’s Farewell Match
for Denmark.

The
West Germans came away as 2 to 0 winners with Thon and Klaus Allofs scoring and
new caps Kohler and Hörster impressing in their debut.

For
their next Friendly at home on October 15th, the Germans tied 2 to 2
with Spain with Bayern Munich’s striker Ronald Wohlfarth earning his first cap.

He
would not earn another cap for another three years.

Klaus
Aughentaler also earned a recall and played in the second half, but he also did
not feature in Beckenbauer’s plans until 1989.

Their
next Friendly, just two weeks later, vs. Austria at Vienna would turn out to be
one of the lowest points of Beckenbauer’s tenure as the West Germans succumbed
to a heavy defeat of 1 to 4 with Toni Polster scoring two penalties and Lothar
Matthaus getting sent off for repeatedly arguing with the referee.

This
disastrous match also marked Bayer Uerdingen defender Wolfgang Funkel’s second
and final cap.

The
recalled Michael Rummenigge of Bayern Munich also played his final match for
West Germany.

Eike
Immel who had now joined Stuttgart started in goal and would remain until the
Euros.

The
following month, on April 18th, they played a high profile friendly
vs. Italy at Koln that ended in a scoreless tie.

Stefan
Reuter of Nuremberg earned his first cap for West Germany.

The
match also marked Mathias Herget’s re-inclusion as Beckenbauer’s Libero.

Pierre
Littbarski also made his first appearance with the national team since Mexico.

In
The summer of 1987, Thomas Berthold and Rudi Völler joined the Italian Serie A
clubs of Verona and AS Roma respectively and Koln’s Klaus Allofs joined
Karlheinz Försterat France’s
Olympique Marseille.

Beckenbauer
expressed that he did not like too many players joining the foreign leagues as
they get used to ‘their’ tempo, which is not ‘our’ tempo.

West
Germany started its Fall 1987 campaign in impressive fashion as France (2-1),
England (3-1) and Denmark (1-0) were defeated in convincing fashion in August
and September.

Bayern
Munich’s Hans Dorfner earned his first cap in the France match, while Koln’s
young goalkeeper Bodo Illgner, who had only replaced Schumacher at club level
just months earlier, started vs. Denmark.

He
would remain Immel’s understudy until the end of the Euros.

Pierre
Littbarski had returned to Koln after a difficult season with Racing Club Paris
and was back in full force.

In
the match vs. England, he scored twice, one of them from a direct corner.

On
October 11, 1987, Beckenbauer appointed former international goalkeeper and
teammate Sepp Maier as West Germany’s goalkeeping coach.

The
West Germans followed up with two more friendlies in October and November vs.
Sweden (1-1) and Hungary (0-0).

Nuremberg
striker Dieter Eckstein earned his first cap in the Hungary match.

The
West Germans embarked on a tour of South America in December 1987 to play vs.
Brazil and Argentina.

This
tour would also serve Beckenbauer as means to test more players.

Mathias
Herget had been suspended for 4 matches in the Bundesliga, therefore under DFB
rules was ineligible for the national team.

However,
Franz Beckenbauer insisted on his presence in the Tour and was authorized.

In
the First match vs. Brazil on December 12th, that ended in a one to
one tie, Beckenbauer gave first caps to Borussia Mönchengladbach’s Christian
Hochstätter, Nuremberg’s Manfred Schwabl, Werder Bremen’s Frank Ordenewitz,
Kaiserslautern’s Franco Foda and Stuttgart and Bundesliga’s top goal scorer Jürgen
Klinsmann.

The
next match, four days later, would be vs. Argentina, a remake of the World Cup
Final, that the Argentines won 1 to 0.

Of
all these new players only Klinnsman made the final cut for Euro 1988.

The
new year (1988) started with Karlheinz Förster, who had provisionally discarded
himself, officially announcing his national team retirement on January 3rd.

On
March and April, The West Germans hosted a four team Tournament with Argentina,
USSR and Sweden, called the Four Nations Tournament at West Berlin.

This
was used as a dress rehearsal for the proper Euro Tournament in a few months
time.

For
their first match on March 31st, the West Germans tied one to one with Sweden.

For
the first time, the new West Germany uniforms contained the colors (Black,
Yellow, Red) of their flag, which was a change from the complete White shirt
strip.

He
repaid the faith in him by scoring West Germany’s winner vs. Argentina on April
2nd for the second match of this tournament.

On
the same day, Sweden defeated USSR (2-0) to win this mini tournament.

Stuttgart’s
Jürgen Klinsmann, who in Allofs’ absence had become Rudi Völler’s new strike
partner, also justified Beckenbauer’s confidence, by scoring his first
international goal in their next friendly vs. Switzerland in April.

Photo
from: World Soccer, October 1989

(Jürgen Klinsmann after scoring, June 14, 1988,
European Championships, West Germany 2-Denmark 0)

This
match marked the debut of Koln’s Armin Görtz, whose excellent season deserved a
cap.

The
Finals squad was announced on May 21st with the expected absence of
the injured Klaus Allofs.

However,
they were some new inclusions: Werder Bremen’s Bundesliga winning duo of Uli
Borrowka and Gunnar Sauer earned spots in the Finals squad, along with Borussia
Dortmund’s Franck Mill.

West
Germany’s final friendly before the Finals turned out to be a disappointing
draw on June 4th vs. Yugoslavia, with Olaf Thon having a
particularly poor match.

The
hosts started on June 10th vs. Italy and after going behind in the
second half to a Roberto Mancini goal, they equalized through Andreas Brehme
with an indirect free kick a few minutes later.

The
foul was awarded after Italy goalkeeper Walter Zenga took extra steps before
kicking the ball up field.

For
their next match on June 14th, the West Germans defeated Denmark
(2-0) with goals by Thon and Klinnsman.

Striker
Rudi Völler, who had joined AS Roma at the beginning of the season, had just
had a very difficult first season.

Former
National team star Paul Breitner, as newspaper columnist, had repeatedly called
for Völler to be dropped in favor of Nuremberg’s Dieter Eckstein.

However,
Beckenbauer had full confidence in his selection and Völler repaid him with two
goals scoring display vs. Spain on June 17th.

8 comments:

As italian, I do remember very well that W.Germany-Italy match at Euro'88. that kind of indirect free-kick was never allowed and would never be in the future in a major tournament; we all felt that the referee was ... well, helpful to the home side.. Nevertheless, Holland and URSS were superior sides so our placement in the top 4 but not in the final was deserved. Sadly, we repeated that in Italy'90, but that's another story.

Yes! We all thought he was going crazy, watching him live.He was not a prolific scorer in the Baggio/Del Piero/Totti fashion; but what an outstanding talent. And I don't even recall a particularly harsh criticism about him in that period; anyway, he subsequently lost his place in the national team in favour of more prolific scorers (Carnevale, Baggio, Schillaci, etc.)

For example, the label to this post is "beckenbauer matthaus Schumacher Voeller Thon Herget allofs illgner littbarski". If I click it, it will only point to the posts that have all these words in this exact order, which normally means that I will get only one result: this post. If you put commas between the names, then people can click ONE of those names and see all posts that have that one name. For example, I could click on Schumacher and Blogspot would list all posts having "Schumacher" as one of the labels (of course, if all those posts have commas to separate the various names), without it being necessary for those posts to have every other name in this particular post.In short, it makes it easier to navigate through your blog without having to use Google. I know it works, because I have a blog on this site as well.